When you’re an actor who made it big as a child star, there’s a good chance the rest of your career is going to have that particular shadow come back time and again. For former How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris, that shadow comes with a stethoscope and answers to the name “Doogie Howser M.D.” Check out Harris hilariously trying to recreate the character’s puberty-driven voice in the Late Late Show clip below.
It’s been ages since I’ve watched Doogie Howser M.D. (a show that I admittedly didn’t care for when it aired, though I was only seven at the time), but now I’m all about going back and reliving teenage Neil Patrick Harris try to have sex with people while sounding like Sean Connery after a balloon’s worth of helium. Or, even better, I’ll start a petition to see if ABC would be interested in bringing the show back to life, not as a reboot or a modern-day continuation, but as an animated comedy in the style of Archer. We know he can still do the voice, so why not have him get paid for it.
Speaking of balls – okay, so no one was, but still – it’s not every day you get to see one man naming another man’s testicles on TV, but James Corden certainly did that. Harris doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would label his genitalia with two of his own names, but maybe the price of Doogie Howser-level fame is not being able to separate yourself from yourself like that. I wonder if Craig Robinson named his balls “Rob” and “Inson.”
Take a trip back to the early 1990s in the Doogie Howser M.D. clip below, which thankfully has nothing to do with teenage hormones rearing their heads.
Isn’t it weird to think that Doogie was a co-creation of Steven Bochco and David E. Kelly? The former is known for non-squeaky-voiced dramas like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, while Kelley made his name with court-based dramas like Ally McBeal and Boston Legal. (The two worked on L.A. Law together as well.) Maybe they’d be interested in reteaming for my animated series idea.
Last seen in Gone Girl and American Horror Story, an adult-voiced Neil Patrick Harris is set to next star in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing with Matt Damon and Reese Witherspoon. Wonder what he’ll sound like in that one.
